Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Fischer: Everything in the Bible is Objectively True

Bryan Fischer’s latest bit of stupid is to claim that every single claim in the Bible can be trusted because “every time we can cross-check the Bible’s record of history against external sources, it matches matches up every time.” Yeah. Except that whole global flood thing. And the age of the earth. And the stopping of the sun. And the resurrection of the saints. And…

Comments

… the deaths of the first born, the exodus from Egypt, the political arrangements of Roman’s and local authorities, the names and dates of Roman appointed governors, lack of corners on a roughly spherical planet, inability to see the entire planet from a tall mountain, the return of the messiah before the deaths of the first generation of Christians….

Fischer (and folks like him) don’t check claims against facts; they check the facts against the claims. With a method like that, along with a healthy dose of “poof! god can do anything!” magical thinking, the bible can’t lose.

Slightly off topic, but am I the only one here who’s tired of blog posts consisting almost entirely of RWW videos of wingnuts? I don’t like to click on them as I value my brain cells and would rather not have to put on headphones to avoid bothering those around me. Give me a transcript, or a more detailed summary.

#6 Tre: I share your preferences. Additionally, my employer inexplicably views Youtube as a sub-optimal source of employee productivity and blocks it. But as long as the blog is free, we’ll have to take it as it comes, I’m afraid…

The infuriating part of this is that Brian Fischer is a reasonably well-educated man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Fischer), and no doubt knows better. He’s just not stupidly ignorant; he’s a calculating LIAR whose sole interest is conning more people into sending him and his benighted organization more and more money. The oldest scam in history: tell people what they want to hear, and allay their nagging doubts that this garbage can’t possibly be true.

Hey Brian, here’s a reasonable alternative scenario: The bible is fiction. The entire story was made up. After all, it’s a lot easier to get followers to your new cult when you can tell this great story about how your prophet rose from the dead! Wow! And I can, too? Yowzah, where do I sign up?

@#10: Unfortunately, it’s long been known that neither intelligence nor education are any guarantee of sanity. I’ve known lots of well-educated right-wing fundie engineers. Very good at their jobs, demented otherwise.

Please define “beginning”. Because if the bible is objectively true, we may have a problem with the definition of “beginning”.

For example, if you’re measuring the course of events over a two-week period … what constitutes the “beginning” of that two week period? Is it Sunday only, or maybe the next day Monday? How about Tuesday? If something was said to occur at “the beginning” of that 2-week period, does Tuesday count as “the beginning”? Certainly not Wednesday, could it? Or Saturday? Or a week from “the beginning”? Heck, you’re halfway through the 2-week period by then. Surely, you can’t mean “the beginning” to mean more than half of the allotted time — could you?

How about the following Tuesday? And how about translating 14 days to 14 billion years — a rounded off approximation of the age of the universe.

According to cosmologists, out of the 14 “days” (aka billion years) from the “beginning” on Sunday wasn’t followed by the formation of the earth until almost a week and a half later — about Tuesday of the second week. 9 of the 14 “days” expired before the Earth coalesced from the dust of space.

If that’s the definition of “beginning”…well, OK then. Otherwise, the bible is literally falsified 10 words in. And I’m afraid it only gets worse as you go along.

@5 biblical unicorns actually exist – ever heard of rhinoceroses? Similarly, leviathan is another name for elephant and komodo dragons are also still around. Of course the biblical accounts are retelling of stories about such creatures (or perhaps now-extinct cousin species to the well known modern varieties).

Mythic stories about wonderful creatures aren’t really much of a case against the bible’s reliability. But they’re part of the case that the good book is the good story book.

I suspect his definitions of objective and truth and evidence are all noticeably different from mine. In fact, since he seems to be speaking wingnutlish, I suspect most of his definitions are both different and contextual. For instance, if it’s in a certain book, it must be objective, the truth, and all the evidence that is needed. But if it’s in another book, say a famous one by a Mr C Darwin, it cannot be true, is a non-objective fantasy, and lacks evidence.

The bible does get some things right; stopped watches and all that.
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pacal: And don’t forget that according to the Bible Pi = 3.
This is true, if your math consists of adding and subtracting whole numbers.
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Also, bats are “birds” if you are using a word that was translated as “bird”, but whose meaning was flying critters, not bugs. But the bible also gets much stuff wrong that can be easily observed, e.g. exposing pregnant cows to striped staffs won’t produce more striped calves. Did *nobody test that claim over many centuries? I suppose we shouldn’t hold God and his followers too accountable – the scientific method hadn’t been developed yet.
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.And of course General Joshua had no trouble defeating Jericho. God was so powerful that he knocked down the walls with an earthquake several centuries before Joshua was born.